Tobino Foundation Museum
Mario Tobino, the famous writer and psychiatrist, worked and lived for almost forty years in the psychiatric hospital of Maggiano, in the hamlet of Santa Maria a Colle.
Contact us
STREET ADDRESS: Fregionaia Street, 692 Maggiano
PHONE: 0583 327243
E-MAIL: info@fondazionemariotobino.it
WEBSITE: fondazionemariotobino.it
She began working in the female ward of the Maggiano mental hospital in 1942 and from 47 to 80. Its "mission" is to make the asylum a humane, civilized, free place, capable of welcoming those affected by the disease, providing space for listening and sharing emotions, suffering, and pain.
A spectator and protagonist of thousands of stories, the sick are his life and his family. After retirement, he asked and was granted permission to continue living in the hospital. Since then, he has lived day and night in the two small rooms inside. Medici House, where he composed most of his literary works.
In addition to being a doctor, Tobino is also a poet and award-winning writer: in 1962 he won the Strega prize with The Clandestine and in 1972 the Campiello Award with For the old scaleHis most famous book, Free Women of Magliano, (Maggiano) dates back, however, to a few years earlier (1953), an intense autobiographical novel that retraces the stories, thoughts, "voices" of the asylum and of the "mad" in a sort of "normality" suspended in time and space.
In 2006, his grandchildren created the Tobino Foundation, dedicated to him, with the aim of preserving, protecting, and promoting Tobino's great scientific and cultural legacy and bringing to light the history and events of the hospital, transforming it into a modern museum.
Lo 'Hospital of the Mad', as it was called by the locals, remained active for over two hundred years, from 1773 the 1999.
Today this place, in all its moving drama, is open to all. Guides accompany visitors to the most evocative and touching spaces: the Management Garden, Cloister of the well e those of the women's and men's divisions, the church, the camera, the kitchens, the painting room, the radiology room, finally Medici House with the two famous little rooms of the doctor-writer.
Along the itinerary it is possible to retrace the history of psychiatry from the 800th century to the present day and the great progress made in the treatment and prevention of mental illness: a rich collection of medical-scientific instruments, clinical records recovered from the archives and the subject of studies and research, Tobino's writings and precious papers, from which emerges the life of a man, a doctor, a man of letters.
For scenic and organizational reasons, the rooms and halls of the psychiatric hospital were reconstructed inside the former Carlo Forlanini Hospital, a historic hospital complex now disused.
The asylum's wards have been set up within its spaces: dormitories, corridors, outpatient clinics, and even hydrotherapy pools, meticulously recreated to recreate the atmosphere of the 1940s. The cloister, identical to the one in Maggiano, is perfectly reconstructed. It can be visited (Tobino Foundation website) from its origins to its development. It traces the history of psychiatry from the 19th century to the present day through a rich collection of medical and scientific instruments and a tour of the two Stanzette (Little Rooms) of Mario Tobino, who lived in the psychiatric hospital for over forty years.